07-11-2010, 11:28 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
|
Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
First of all, for a list of other threads about the Orichalcum Universe,
See here: Orichalcum Universe: The Basics I've been reposting some things originally posted on rec.games.frp.gurps about my game/story-world, the Orichalcum Universe, in a few threads for those who were or are interested. This thread is about Atlantis and related subjects, and it's going be kind of long by necessity, I'm afraid. Note that the Atlantis material I originally posted was some of the first bits, and since then inconsistences have gotten in, so I've tried ot clean it up, correct some errors and oversights, etc. Anyway, for those interested, here it is. ------------------------------------------------- ATLANTIS and the ANTEDILUVIAN AGE... Our story actually opens a good distance from Atlantis, in the continent of Africa, and has its earlier roots in the events that occurred when the Eldren were transplanting the majority of the Homosapient population of the planet Earth to new homes on terraformed planets across the Greater Milky Way. [1] Out of all the several hundred Eldren trapped on Earth, only two remained semi-conscious, initially. Others would regains this state as time passed, but initially only their leaders on each side, the oldest and most powerful in each case, were even semi-conscious. Actually, 'semi' is perhaps generous, they were in dreamy half-state between consciousness and dormancy, varying back and forth. Unlike the others, they were retained some limited ability to affect their surroundings. It was only a fraction of what they would possess 'awake', but even a minute fraction of such vast power was still quite impressive. Recall that a full Eldren possesses, by mortal standards, gargantuan powers. These half-dormant entities were only a pale shadow of their normal selves, but still immensely capable compared to TL0 Humanoids. Even trapped, and all but unconscious, it was possible for them to make remarkable things happen, if they could become sufficiently focused. Over the course of time, thousands of years of time, the Watcher eventually managed to come up with an idea for an attempt to escape from the trap in which it was caught. Of course, the passage of time alone would eventually bring this about, over the course of a few million years. In the scale of the Eldren, this is a very short time, but the Watcher would have preferred to be free sooner. Thus the loose plan it gradually assembled. It was a slow thought, since it was thinking slowly, and sporadically. It might have taken it a century to conceive the idea, another few centuries to ponder it, another few to decide to act on it, and another century or so to make it happen. It might have taken longer, even the Watcher itself could not have said. Its sense of time was as scrambled as his consciousness. Perhaps it took millennia, not centuries. The Watcher had no way to know. The Watcher needed a way to manipulate the physical world, a way to seek out and reassemble its de-integrated self, and to awaken the other trapped Eldren of its following. It needed, first, to awaken its four primary ‘lieutenants’, who could assist with the next steps. To do so, it needed a tool, an instrument with which to manipulate the outside world. What it eventually produced was the idea of creating an artificial humanoid, what another age might called a sort of ‘bioroid’ for lack of a better term. Drawing on the relatively enormous psionic and other powers it could still use, the Watcher created over the course of time something that might have been classifiable, very loosely, as a bioroid growth-tank. It would have looked very strange to a later Homosapient bioengineer, more like a huge mass of living tissues and weird glassine elements than a machine in the Homosapient sense, but it performed its purpose. It was assembled by a combination of psi-controlled humanoids and apes and monkeys, and by the action of psi-directed microorganisms and insects. African termites assembled a variation on one of their nests to form the framework. Spiders spun structures of silk far more complex than anything they could produce on their own. Droplets of blood and bits of skin from the psi-controlled humans who worked to help bring about this living machine provided DNA and cells to work with as a basis. It took centuries of steady, patient, tricky work. [2] The first efforts were not successful. Each attempt came closer to being viable, however, and eventually, after many failed tries (the results of which are perhaps best not dwelt upon), the Watcher succeeded in its goal of creating a living, artificial Homosapient host for itself. It then merged one of its ‘fragments’ into the new being, enabling the Watcher, most of the time, to be able to perceive the world through the senses of its new creation. Most of the time, of course, the Watcher was not even close to sufficiently aware or focused to even attempt to make use of this ability, but it was present, and the connection could be used when the Watcher was ‘awake’. The resulting hybridized entity awakened into the paleolithic world of Earth, thousands of years before the settlement of Atlantis, or the Americas. MORE LATER. [1] For information about those events, see here: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=70292&page=3 [2] The Eldren, as has been noted, are not natural, instinctive tool users in the same way Helians and Homosapients are. Their abilities are more 'instinctive' with natural things, they are far more comfortable in manipulating living biospheres than to shape or use purely non-living tools. |
07-11-2010, 11:37 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
|
Re: Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
LATER.
The bioroid had a mind of his own, of course. With a living brain based on human (and human-cousin) DNA and cells, he was in fact basically ‘one of us’. But his brain and body were 'designed' to be an ultra-efficient psionic system, among other things, and his own innate psi potential surpassed anything naturally occurring in H. sapiens (at least so far). His body, likewise, was an 'idealization' of the human form, stronger, faster, tougher, etc, though not superhumanly so, unlike the psi factor. [1] Of course, one other difference between the bioroid and the natural humans who were his cousins was that he was, for practical purposes, ageless. Though no living thing can endure eternally, the processes of aging that were at work in all natural Homosapients were all but totally absent from this entity, even aside from the enormous psionic potential that could enable him to overcome such processes had they been present. The Watcher had no wish for its living tool to lose all utility in what would be, for an Eldren, the merest instant. This entity would die only from violence or starvation or other such causes, age alone would not end his life (save perhaps on a scale of hundreds of millennia). He was, perhaps, as close as it was possible for any sort of Homosapient to be to immortality. The Watcher then returned to its near-dormancy, storing a piece of itself in a perfect symbiosis with its creation, in specialized organ structures the bioroid possessed that normal humanoids don't. The mind of its creation, in theory, could have access to all the knowledge of its creator/symbiotic partner. In practice, it didn't work that way. The young entity emerged into a world equipped with a smattering of knowledge he didn't know how he knew, some imperatives he didn't quite comprehend, and powers he soon realized others didn't have. One of the imperatives was to seek out the other 'fragments' of the Watcher, scattered around the planet, and 'awaken' and absorb them. He didn't know that's what he was doing, but it was, and he began, over the course of the following centuries, to do that. Along the way, he also looked, as a result of another subconscious imperative, for the dormant fragments of the other Eldren. And, of course, he was programmed to be on the lookout for his creator's enemy, who the Watcher knew would sooner or later awaken, and who represented a problem to the Watcher, and a dire potential threat, in its way, for all live on Earth. MORE LATER. [1] In terms of his physical abilities, think Captain America, not Superman. Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 07-11-2010 at 11:51 PM. |
07-12-2010, 12:27 AM | #3 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
|
Re: Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
LATER.
This first artificial being came into the world with little understanding of his own abilities or nature, only some instinctive urges and priorities and a smattering of knowledge that he had no idea how he knew, only that he knew it was true. He was fundamentally different than other Homosapients, most notably in the fact of his effective immortality, but other differences existed as well. Along with the superb and effortless physical abilities that his genetic pattern provided, this first immortal was semi-sterile. His sexual urges were no different than any natural Homosapient, but as a side-effect of the combinations of genes used to bring him about (and not entirely without intent on the part of his creator), he could father only infertile offspring when partnered with a woman of any natural Homosapient species. The hybrid offspring resulting from such unions were unusual, both long-lived and possessed of unusual abilities, but were also invariably sterile themselves, with any partner. Also, this artificial man had never had a childhood. He had come into the world as a fully developed (at least in body and in some ways mentally) adult. Psychologically, this had many effects, and was probably second only to his longevity as a factor setting him apart from his ‘fellow men’, it was a gap in experience between them that could not close. [1] He came into a world that was not yet emerged from the paleolithic age in any way that really mattered. The exact time of his ‘birth’ and life is unanswerable, nobody on Earth in that time was yet using calendars or clocks, life for those early humans (and the few remaining near-humans) was measured more in the passing of the days and seasons than anything else, the only history was oral history. In theory, he could have lived into the present, and far beyond. In the event, he survived for slightly more than one thousand years. For all his power and ability, he was still a creature of flesh and blood, and though his psionic power made him a potential match for almost any other creature, it required that he use it effectively. Eventually, he made a small but fatal mistake, and perished under the feet of an angry elephant. The Watcher took perhaps a century, in its dreamy half-aware state, to notice that its living tool had perished, and it would be too much to say that the ancient being was either saddened or angry. Instead, in its slow half-helpless way, the Watcher set about creating a new ‘agent’ to take the place of the dead one. This time the process was rather smoother and more efficient, since the Watcher had a fairly good idea of how to go about the matter. Further, the first ‘agent’ had found and made contact with some of the other trapped Familiar Eldren, and enabled communication between them and the Watcher. Inspired by the Watcher, some of the other Familiar Eldren now used the same processes to create ‘avatars’ of their own. For our purposes, we shall refer to these artificial people as Avatars, a name not without applicability, though they have as a ‘race’ gone by many names among many peoples and in many places, usually names assigned by those with no more than the tiniest grasp of their nature or origins. Indeed, they themselves had little grasp of those things. Those early Avatars, for the most part, lived very short lives in comparison with their potential for life. Most of them, like the first one created by the Watcher, made some error or mistake in the dangerous world they lived in, and perished after a few centuries or so. The brighter, luckier ones lasted longer, a few unlucky or less capable ones lived much shorter lives. [2] Eventually, the life-spans increased as the Familiar Eldren began to copy some memories from previous Avatars into the minds of younger ones, enabling them to learn, albeit as a remove, from the experiences of their predecessors. This was slow and clumsy, since the new Avatars had no idea how they knew what they knew, but their survival and success rates did get better. Some of the Familiar Eldren maintained only one Avatar at a time, some maintained more than one. Again, it should be held firmly in mind that these were individual, separate people, not merely remote-controlled puppets of their creators. They had minds and personalities and wills of their own, though their creators could influence them strongly, and much in their personalities ‘echoed’ some elements in the personalities of those Eldren who created them. Also, it should be kept in mind that the Avatars had little understanding of their own origins and nature, and many of them never encountered another of their own kind in the course of centuries-long lives. The Earth is vast, its distances enormous, and most of the time there were no more than a few dozen Avatars in the world at any given time, spread out all over Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas. The number of Avatars did tend, though, to increase very slowly as the centuries passed. As time passed, one particular Avatar was brought into being, in what would one day be called northern Africa, who will play a key role in later events, and who was unique even among a unique race in terms of his own potentials and abilities and native intelligence. He would be known by a variety of names down the ages, but we shall use the name ‘Zadatharion’ to identify him, an Anglicization of one of his oldest and ‘favored’ names. His role in our story will become clear later, for the moment our attention must move to another Avatar, one rather younger than Zadatharion. This Avatar also used various names through his long life, but by far the one he used most readily, and was addressed by most commonly, was actually a title rather than a name. To the Atlanteans, he would one day be known as ‘the Eldest’. [3] MORE LATER. [1] He was, after all, essentially human. [2] Even for physically superior and psionically uber-powerful people, TL0 life is dangerous and difficult. [3] This title was awarded and claimed in ignorance of the existence of older Avatars. |
07-12-2010, 07:50 PM | #4 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
|
Re: Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
LATER.
Again, no one can say just when the Eldest 'awakened' (a better term, perhaps, than 'born') into the world. The location was somewhere in central Europe or western Asia, most likely, certainly the Eldest spent most of an indeterminate period in what we today would call Europe, Asia, and Africa, but mostly Europe and western Asia. He traveled from place to place, and after a time, he began to gather a group of mortal followers, mostly drawn from the primitive peoples then dwelling in Europe. The world was a different place in those days, including in ways that are lost to history in 2010. Suffice it to say that the Eldest, effectively immortal, very powerful psionically, was able to offer protection to threatened mortals, and he was a competent and charismatic leader. Over the course of generations, a motley collection of followers turned into a people, a tribe, organized around an immortal chieftain. Even as this was happening, circumstances too involved to go into here were pressing them westward. The ‘tribe’ initially came together in the region of what is today called the Alps. Their first home was a fertile mountain valley in what we today know as modern Switzerland, but various circumstances forced them first to the north, out of the mountains, and then westward, moving toward the Atlantic Ocean. As they went new members joined the tribe, selected by the Eldest on the basis how well he thought they would fit into his tribe, and also, half-consciously, for other criteria. The tribe grew, in spite of being pressed westward against their will, until at last they found themselves making a home of sorts on the coast of modern France. Unfortunately, they were pressed in by both hostile human neighbors, and also by other creatures as well. We will discuss the nature of these creatures at a later time, for now suffice it to say that even the powers of the Eldest were not fully sufficient to protect the possessions and safety of his followers. However, ‘within’ the Eldest was another consciousness, a half-aware mentality belonging to the particular Familiar Eldren that had created the Eldest. From that mind, the Eldest had a smattering of information that he knew to be true, even though he did not know how he knew it. He knew, for example, that the Earth was a spherical body, and that it circle the Sun. He knew that the Sun was larger than the Earth, and that the Moon was smaller than the Earth, and that it circled the Earth. He did not know how he knew, but he knew. He knew a great many such odd bits and pieces of information. Among them was a particularly interesting piece of information: he knew that there was a large and fertile island, located far out at sea in the ocean to the west of their lands. Pressed on all sides, the Eldest and his tribe were trapped against the Atlantic. The thought came to the Eldest, though, that if they could reach that empty island, which he knew to be empty, they would have enormous amounts of fertile land, and nearly total safety and protection from the threats they were dealing with in Europe. To reach that island, however, in the primitive age of which we speak, was no small challenge. Still, the Eldest and his people were familiar with small boats, they used them to seek fish. They were crude hide and wood boats, but they did work. Also, the world was a different place then in terms of climate. The interglacial period had begun, but the ice was still retreating, vast amounts of pack ice were to be found in the Atlantic far south of its present-day extent. The Eldest and his followers knew they might be able to follow along the edge of the ice to reach the island their leader knew existed, using the ice as ‘land’. In the end, the attempt was made, and the story of their journey along the edge of the ice would make an epic in itself. They took heavy losses, but they had little to lose, staying where they were was not practical. They could have held on for some time, but not indefinitely. Between the powers of the Eldest, and an epic effort by his mortal followers, this tiny tribe of primitive people were able to make the dangerous and difficult journey from Europe to that central Atlantic island. They arrived in the spring (northern hemisphere) of the year 9840 B.C., their battered, barely-floating boats pulling ashore amid a gap in the cliffs, near a vast and fertile valley. MORE LATER. |
07-12-2010, 08:32 PM | #5 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
|
Re: Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
LATER.
The Rise of Atlantis... The island, of course, was that land mass that would once day be called by Plato, ‘Atlantis’. The newly arrived settlers, of course, had their own names for it, most of them translating to some variation on the ‘Great Isle’. Other cultures also would remember this island and its people, under other names, but ‘Atlantis’ is the best-remembered one, and the accounts of Plato were at least slightly closer to the reality than some, so we shall use the terminology of that philosopher. The account of Plato was far from fully accurate, but it did contain some pieces of the truth. The Great Isle was large, and geologically freakish. It came about as a side-effect of Eldren interference tens of millions of years before. A small mantle plume that was approaching the surface happened to do so under that geological structure known as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This plume was creating a situation not entirely dissimilar to that to be found under Iceland, but on a larger scale. The Eldren, for reasons of their own, had ‘dammed’ the plume, and this had led as a side-effect to the creation of the Great Isle. We will delve into the peculiar geology of Atlantis in more depth (no pun intended) later. For now, let a modest description of this geologically strange island suffice. The Great Isle ran in a serpentine path, along the line of the Mid-Atlantic Rift, roughly from thirty-five degrees north latitude to very approximately fifty-five degrees north latitude. The Isle was not extremely wide through most of its twisting length, and a ‘spine’ of volcanic mountains ran along the central length, rising to truly imposing heights in the south and north. A belt of fertile land lay about the central spine on either side, with wider areas of foothills and land in the northern and southern extremes. Many smaller volcanoes and hills dotted these relative lowlands, and a few very large volcanic features were also to be found in the lowlands. Along the coasts, cliffs marked the meeting of Atlantis and the sea, save in a few places, Atlantis always suffered from a shortage of good natural harborage. The climate ranged from mild and much like the modern Mediterranean in the far south at this time, to subarctic in the far north. As the years passed and the world warmed, Atlantis became steadily more clement. Even in these times, it was almost paradisiacal to a tribe of primitive and fleeing fugitives from late Paleolithic Europe. On the eastern side of the Island, and somewhat south of the center of the Isle, was the great valley that became the first home of the settlers, and this valley would be remembered in the accounts of Plato as the great circular valley in which the Atlantean capitol city was raised. In this Plato was right, but that came later. At this time, it was merely the place were a fleeing rag-tag band of refugees settled, finding good land, shelter from the worst extremes of weather, fresh water, and safety. The valley was not so large as Plato would have it, but it was roughly round, and it did have a central hill with a lake around it, in turn surrounded by broken up bodies of water (as opposed to the concentric rings of water, which would come later). This hill was on the eastern side of the huge valley, about halfway between the coast and the center of the depression. In nature, it was what a modern geologist would call a cinder cone, somewhat worn by wind and rain, but still recognizable for what it was. Even the springs of which Plato spoke had their origins here, there were springs of hot waters flowing from the sides of the ancient cone, water that circulated down from rainwater and aquifers and was heated by deep magma still bubbling away beneath the immense valley, rising back and emerging as steady streams of warm or hot water. There in fact many such hot springs to be found on and around the cinder cone, as well as shallower springs which had colder water. Originally, the settlers all avoided the cinder cone out of a sort of superstitious dread. Towering over the open plain, covered by the trees that were absent from most of the rest of the vast valley floor (it was a grassland), it seemed ominous to the settlers, it was two generations after arrival before the Eldest led a small contingent of his human followers, accompanied by two other Avatars who had made the trip to Atlantis with the Eldest, to scale the hill. [1] As the superstitious dread faded with time and familiarity, the Eldest set up his headquarters on the lower slopes of the tree-covered cinder-cone. At first this was little more than an elaborate tent of the sort that the tribe had used back in Europe, but within a few generations of their arrival, hide and bone and crude wood had begun to give way to more elaborate, if yet crude, stone constructions. MORE LATER. [1] Little will be said of these two other Avatars for some time, but they do matter. Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 09-27-2010 at 10:10 PM. |
07-13-2010, 09:01 PM | #6 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
|
Re: Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
LATER.
Atlantis was, in many ways, a paradise from the point of view of the new arrivals. It had no inhabitants, plentiful game, rich soil once they discovered the eastern plain and some of the smaller valleys, a mild climate, and the protection of vast stretches of ocean from their former enemies. While the lives of the first Atlantean settlers would seem hard beyond imagining to twenty-first century Westerners, to resettled paleolithic tribesmen, their new lives were a blessing beyond measure or easy expression. Agriculture had not yet fully developed in the Old World at that time, but in Atlantis, it was a natural development, and it advanced faster than it did in Europe or even the middle east. A few centuries after they arrived in Atlantis, their population had grown by several times, and they had become fairly competent farmers and builders. It should be noted, as ought to be obvious by now, that the history of the Earth in the Orichalcum Universe is not entirely like the history of the world as recorded in the year 2010. Why is the history of the world as remembered in 2010 wrong in the Orichalcum Universe? We shall see. [1] Atlantis was not the only place in the world in which groups of humans were advancing. Still, there was no question that in terms of technological and social development, Atlantis in the Tenth Millennium B.C. was the most advanced society on the planet, solidily into what we would call a ‘Bronze Age’ level of technical ability by 9000 B.C. [2] It should be noted that the Atlanteans were still ruled by the same being who had led them to Atlantis in the first place. The Avatars, as noted above, are immortal, unless they die by violence, starvation or other ‘unnatural’ cause. During this period, he refined his skills, learning how to use his own powers more efficiently, and he also began to teach some of those skills to others, to those among his mortal followers who proved capable of learning them. It was here that the Atlanteans began to seriously diverge, as a race, from the track the rest of the world was on. Among the gifts wielded by the Eldest was the ability, initially used only in a half-conscious way, to sense latent psionic potentials in others, especially in ‘ordinary’ members of the species H. sapiens. One of the things that the Eldest had chosen his initial followers for was this potential, though he had himself at the time only a dim grasp of just what it was he sought. Later, with experience and understanding, he came to grasp the at least some mortals had the innate potential to wield powers of the same sort as his own, within limits of nature and intensity. In Atlantis, even as the Eldest refined and increased his own native powers, he began to train his followers in the same skills, or those of his skills which they were capable of learning. [3] The powers possessed by his trained followers were never more than a tiny and pale fraction of the power their ruler commanded. This was rarely a source of difficulty, however, it seemed natural enough to them that their immortal ruler would be possessed of powers beyond those of mortal subjects. Though progress was slow at first, the Atlanteans did begin to learn how to use their potential psi-talents. They were already psionically stronger than the average population of the Earth, since that was part of what had led their chief to choose his followers. The Atlanteans therefore had a genetic ‘head start’ in the effort to master psionic abilities. [4] They advanced in other areas as well, of course. They developed bronze well ahead of anyone else, as we have noted. They had once of the first systems of writing ever created on Earth, though it might not be the very oldest. As they were developing in extreme isolation, the Atlanteans were moving along a path unlike that of any other population in the Antediluvian Age. MORE LATER. [1] In my gaming world, the accepted history of the world, both lay and academic, in 2010 is the same as it is in the real world. It’s just that in my world, that history is incomplete and sometimes wrong. [2] In GURPS 3e terms, they were in at TL1 in 9000 B.C. [3] Some of the psychic abilities possessed by the Avatars are unique to them, and not present in ‘normal’ Homosapients. [4] Psionic potential has a definite and significant hereditary component. |
07-13-2010, 09:24 PM | #7 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
|
Re: Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
LATER.
One interesting side-effect of the combination of the excellent volcanic soil, relatively mild climate, and the Atlanteans own growing psi-talents (which made them unusually effective farmers), was that they consistently had what were, for the tine, excellent harvests. Even the poorest Atlanteans rarely went hungry. On top of that, their diets contained plentiful fruits of various sorts from the native trees of the island (and later from orchards), and they obtained a large percentage of their calories from meat protein, both wild game and later domestic animals (especially goats at first, a strain bred from wild Atlantean goats). Atlantis was also rich with various forms of edible fowl. This had the result that the Atlanteans tended to be somewhat taller, as well rather stronger, and rather healthier than the majority of the H. sapiens population of the world at that time. Between their plentiful and varied diets and the fact that they were fairly well-insulated from most contagious diseases, the average life-span of the Atlanteans rose notably in comparison with the planetary average for Homo sapiens at that time. Simple old age became the most common cause of death among the Atlanteans. Naturally, the early Atlanteans did not immediately build cities. They settled near the edges of the great central plain at first, viewing the central cone with a certain superstitious dread, as we have noted. But as time passed and their population grew, they spread inward across the plain, and outward into other smaller valleys and plains as well. As the population of Atlantis grew so did the complexity of their society. What started out as a fairly basic late paleolithic tribal grouping, exceptional only in their leadership, grew over time first into an agricultural community, and then later into blossoming towns. The first towns were along the edges of the sea on the Eastern Plain, but later, they moved toward the center of the Plain, drawn by the dead volcano itself, and by the ores and material they discovered that they could mine from it. The Eldest, as we have noted, set up his primary dwelling on this ancient cinder cone, and what began as a large tent grew over centuries into a large and very complex and well-constructed stone palace. The central volcano was not terribly high, but was broader than Plato had it, over a mile wide at the base. It was indeed surrounded by a ring lake, like a moat, this rough circle of water filled a natural depression that had formed around the edges of the cinder cone. Other depressions a little further away held bodies of what that were not initially connected to each other. Furthermore, the hot and cold springs existed, as we have noted already. The emerging Atlantean society, in this ancient, emerging time, could not by any means be called a democracy. All power was held by the Eldest, or in his name, he was the ultimate font of all political and legal authority, no one could possess any form of political authority absent the sanction of the Eldest. Immortal, possessed of vast telepathic and psychokinetic powers, highly intelligent and when necessary ruthless, the Eldest was a very effective ruler. Naturally, as the population grew and the emerging society spread out across Atlantis, and the complexity of the society grew, the Eldest could not govern every aspect of life personally. The authority of a tribal chieftain had to grow over time into the authority of a monarch, and that monarch could not be everywhere at once. The Eldest required subordinates to whom he could delegate power, and whom he could trust to act in his name. The solution to this came of the fact that the Eldest was fully capable of siring children with mortal women, and did so often. The Eldest generally had at least one mortal wife, and sometimes more than one such, as well as concubines, and sired children on both. [1] These children were invariably gifted with psychic power greater than the norm even in Atlantis, power inherited from their immortal parent. Add to this the careful training their father could provide, and these individuals could wield power no other person in Atlantis could match, save their own father, who was mightier by far than any of them. Of course, all such offspring, as is the nature of their case, shared in one disadvantage as well: all were genetically sterile. MORE LATER. [1] The terms ‘wife’ and ‘concubine’ are used loosely, naturally, to translate their role and social status in Atlantean society. |
07-25-2010, 09:18 PM | #8 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
|
Re: Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
LATER.
The emerging political system was actually quite practical, and stable, in much because the sheer power of the Eldest made him nearly impossible to overcome by any rebel. Along with that, that age of the Eldest, and the fact that he had ruled the Atlanteans literally throughout the history, from before the days when the came to Atlantis, made the idea of any sort of rebellion against his authority very nearly unthinkable. It became culturally difficult for the Atlanteans to even imagine their society absent the rule of the Eldest. With his ability to sire sterile, but powerful and intelligent, offspring to act as his lieutenants, it was possible for the Eldest to expand and evolve his role from chieftain to absolute monarch. Atlantis, as its society grew in population and sophistication, came to be divided into ten regions, centered on the central mountain spine, these regions were the primary political subdivision of the Great Isle, though they were far from equal in territory, wealth, population, or resources. Each of these ten ‘provinces’ was ruled by a particular offspring of the Eldest, while the great eastern plain, and its emerging capitol city, were under the direct rule of the monarch. Since the local viceroys were all sterile, they could not found dynasties of their own. Instead, those who were successful and capable and loyal would rule for a century or two, and then retire or die in office and be replaced by a new child of the Eldest. Along with these ten provinces, there were secondary levels of power, such as the lords of individual cities, the heads of various sorts of guilds and organizations, leaders of the small Atlantean army (really more of a police force at this stage of history), etc. These positions, too, tended to be filled by the sons and daughters of the Eldest, and it was from among the most successful of these positions that the nine viceroys were chosen by their father to rule the various provinces. (Incompetent offspring were usually assigned lesser work, disloyal or rebellious ones rarely survived long enough to matter.) It was in this period of rule by the Eldest and his long-lived offspring that another of the differences between Atlantis and the other emerging realms and nations of the Antediluvian Age emerged. The Eldest did not have any hesitation in appointing his female offspring to positions of power, and their psionic strength and life-span were no less than those of their various brothers. This early experience of great political and social power in the hands of females made the Atlantean culture far more accepting of female power and position than most other societies of the age. By modern Western standards, the Atlanteans of this time would seem to be chauvinistic and reactionary, by the standards of the ancient world, and most Homosapient civilizations at TL1, the Atlanteans were egalitarian with regard to the sexes. The emerging psionic power of the Atlantean population became a key social status marker, greater powers, and greater skill with those abilities, marked a person as notable and important, and such people tended, over time, to marry others like themselves, increasing their social status and the importance of the psionic power that was partly hereditary. The fact of this importance led to a great deal of effort to improve skills, work led and approved by the Eldest himself. His own innate powers and skills were still growing, and he was mastering new techniques as the centuries passed. Some of these techniques were adaptable for used by mortal psions. As the centuries passed, the initially limited and halting psionic powers of the Atlanteans grew, becoming more powerful, more extensive, vastly more subtle and sophisticated, and far more commonplace. The Atlanteans were emerging as a race of psions, in a culture placing high value on these powers and on accomplishment with such abilities. As time passed, these powers enabled them to accomplish feats far beyond what their mid-TL2 (at that time) technology should have enabled them to manage, especially once they mastered the technique of creating psionic ‘gestalts', mental unions capable of greatly amplifying individual powers. Pyrokinesis enabled them to extract small quantities of ore from hard rock, and to melt and work metals superior to bronze, including, eventually, small amounts of iron for weapons and armor and tools. Gestalt-amplified TK enabled them to build large structures out of heavy stone, to transport loads easily, etc. Their mostly subconscious precognitive abilities tended to function as 'superintuition'. This enabled them to find ore deposits, good water, the best soil, etc. It also enabled them to advance their technology anomalously fast in some areas. Telepathy made communications easy, and eventually Atlantis was linked together by a telepathic network that made communication in Atlantis possible with an ease that would not be matched again until the late 19th Century. The Eldest also discovered something else, something that would revolutionize Atlantean society. A fragment of the vast knowledge of his dormant symbiotic partner led him to recognize the existence of 'orichalcum'. This was a unique substance, occurring in nature but normally buried deep in the planetary mantle on Earth. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge, as a zone of sea-floor spreading, in part as a side-effect of the former Eldren tampering that had brought Atlantis into being to begin with, sometimes brought small amounts of the material to the upper levels, and thus it was that occasional small deposits of orichalcum could be found in Atlantis (and also in Iceland, though they didn't yet know that). Orichalcum is not conventional matter, it doesn't fit anywhere on the periodic table. In my background, it has a nucleus in which protons and neutrons are interspersed and sometimes replaced with more exotic particles that the Standard Model doesn't even recognize in 2010. The electron shells are fairly conventional, giving it surface properties similar to copper, save that it is about thirty percent lighter than copper, and glows bright red in sunlight. The red glow is the result of ultraviolet light, being converted by the material into red light. Thus, most forms of artificial light do not produce that red glow. In ancient Atlantis, the only serious source of UV was the Sun. Orichalcum could be alloyed into metals, producing lighter alloys of bronze with greater strength, or it could be alloyed with iron to make a truly peculiar form of steel. But they never had enough of it for large scale use in weapons or armor, though an impure alloy of it was used for decoration in the most expensive and most important places. What made orichalcum really important to Atlantis was that it had various weird properties when it interacted with psionics. For example, used one way, it could be used to amplify the effect of psychokinesis, making it easier to manipulate, heat, or chill large masses. Used in a different way, it could be used to amplify, or to screen against, telepathy or extra-sensory perception. Still other applications were also possible, some of them subtle. It has been observed, however, the nature seems to trend toward making life harder. The orichalcum of Atlantis, for all its utility, was not an exception to this general rule. The very psi-active properties that made orichalcum so valuable also made it spectacularly dangerous to try to mine and refine using the psionic techniques that made other forms of mining so much easier and more efficient for the Atlanteans. The Atlanteans had mastered techniques using psionic power to locate, mine, and refine various metals. Extra-sensory perception could be used to find the richest veins, the best sites to mine. Telekinesis could be used to extract ore, pyrokinesis to melt rock and separate the constituents, cryokinesis to chill materials rapidly, telepathy made mining safer by making communication between the miners almost trivially easy. None of these techniques were applicable to the mining of orichalcum. This wondrous material had to be mined and refined by the conventional techniques of TL2, which made for back-breakingly difficult, dangerous, slow, and very expensive work. The Orichalcum Guild was born in this age, among the miners who sweated, toiled, and sometimes died to provide the material on which the advancing Atlantean Civilization so depended. Their deposits of orichalcum, once they figured out how to extract and use it, combined with their own ever-growing psi powers, created something approximating an industrial revolution in Atlantis. MORE LATER. |
07-25-2010, 09:51 PM | #9 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
|
Re: Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
LATER.
The account of Plato report that the ancient Atlanteans were skilled mariners. In the fullness of time, the ancient Atlanteans did indeed become skilled mariners, their ships would penetrate every sea and land on every coast, but this came in a later time, as with all things, the Atlantean maritime tradition had a beginning. The Atlanteans had originally arrived in Atlantis by sea, in crude boats of hide and wood. Over the following centuries, as the original tribe grew into a sophisticated and increasingly urban society, they never did entirely forget that. This was partly from a long cultural memory, and also because their ruler, the Eldest, could personally remember those times. As time went on, the Atlanteans began to use boats again. They used small boats to travel the rivers of the island, and a bit later slightly larger boats to fish off the coasts, and to reach the smaller islands associated with the major landmass of Atlantis. Some of those islands were close enough to be easily visible to the naked eye from Atlantis itself, a few were further away (but not very far, they were all part of the same volcanic system). A further incentive to develop seafaring came as they spread over the island, into other valleys and regions. Atlantis was highly mountainous, and at times it was actually easier and faster to take a boat and sail around the island rather than try to cross the very mountainous central region of the island. The 'Central Plain' was actually very much confined to the eastern side of the island, the actual center of Atlantis was very mountainous, with few passes or useful trails. The Atlantean tendency to rely on their growing psionic powers turned up here, as well. In an application of psychokinesis akin to levitation, the Atlanteans learned to apply a psionic force to propel their boats. They also mastered various ways to harness the wind. As their seamanship improved, they learned to combine wind power and psionic power efficiently, using them together or alternating them as the case demanded. The passage of time saw the design of the sails grow ever more sophisticated, the ships ever more seaworthy. While they were developing their seafaring skills, they also developed tremendous skills in woodworking, and stone carving. The ability to move multi-ton weights long distances using gestalts enabled them to build buildings like no other on Earth at that time. Their greatest city, built around the dead volcano in the Central Plain, grew steadily more comfortable, elaborate, and beautiful, with wood and stone used in ways undreamed of by the rest of the world at the time. In part because of their psi powers, and in part due to the fragments of knowledge the Eldest had, the Atlanteans began to excel in biology. They mastered the basics of Mendelian genetics, and became quite skillful at selective breeding. They were able to produce improved varieties of their basic staple crops, and they also bred 'better' (from the human point of view) forms of wood for construction and shipbuilding, as well. The discovery of orichalcum, and its psionic properties, multiplied their abilities at least by an order of magnitude overall. It was during the heady times of the 'orichalcum revolution' that an enterprising shipwright thought to incorporate a mesh of orichalcum wire into the hull of a wooden ship, with the mess containing larger nodules of orichalcum alloys as well. This had the effect of making the ship effectively lighter than it really was, as far as PK was concerned. By putting a gestalt of strong psychokinetic psions aboard to propel it, along with a good set of sails, his shipwright created the first of the Atlantean wide-ocean vessels, capable of rapidly travelling at high speed across the Atlantic to Europe and Africa on one side, and North and South America on the other. The long isolation of the Atlanteans was over. This ship, crewed by psionically powerful seamen and commanded by a son of the Eldest himself, made the first intentional journey away from Atlantis in ages. A few others had of course made abortive attempts at sea travel, but they didn't know where they were going, or what they were doing, and hadn't returned. This ship, on the other hand, returned to Atlantis after making a journey to what we today know as Europe, even penetrating a short distance into the Mediterranean Sea, and sailing along the western coast of Africa, as it was then. However, it should be noted that this was merely the first such voyage made by intent. There had been at least one successful (by some definitions of ‘successful’) oceanic voyage beyond Atlantis before, this one made not by intent but by accident...and thereby hangs a tale. MORE LATER. |
08-01-2010, 08:27 PM | #10 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
|
Re: Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
LATER.
Before we discuss the interaction of Atlantis and the outside world, however, a little more should be said of the Great Isle and its people and culture, to set the stage for later developments. The Great Isle had a rich and flourishing ecosystem in the period before the arrival of Man. The volcanic soils were rich, the climate varied from warm to tolerable throughout much of the island, save in the upper north reaches, and a rich flora was present. In the upper altitudes, conifers of a variety of species dominated, the lowlands were covered by a thick deciduous forest derived primarily from North American ancestry, though some European and African species were to be found as well. Many familiar species of deciduous tree were present, as well as some evolved specifically to Atlantis. (There were also plants evolved in Atlantis that would later be spread to the rest of the world by the Atlanteans, commonplace plants with an unsuspected exotic source.) Animal life on the Great Isle derived, as might be expected, from both Europe and North America as primary sources, along with a few species of South American origin. There were also some species present on the Great Isle that ought not, logically, to have been expected to be present there. The reason for these ‘out of place’ species will be made clear later. Many birds common to the continents to both east and west were present, and some had evolved to become flightless in the relatively secure environs of the Great Isle. Among the species present on the Great Isle at the time of the arrival of the first settlers in 9453 B.C. were chickens, doves, hawks, eagles, crows, and three different, non-interfertile species of turkey, one of which sometimes grew to nearly the size of an ostrich and filled a grazing herbivore niche in some isolated reaches of the western side of Atlantis. Also to be found were local varieties of duck, goose, and Land animals were not as varied and numerous on the isolated Great Isle as they were in the Americas and Eurasia/Africa, as was to be expected. Still, a variety of goat had somehow made the crossing to Atlantis, long enough in the prehistoric past to evolve to suit the conditions, becoming smaller and adapting to the mountainous central reaches. Other natives of Atlantis was an island-adapted cousin of the North American squirrel, and a cousin of the European wild pig. Predators were scarcer on the Great Isle than the mainland, the top predator (prior to the arrival of Man) being the Atlantean ‘russet bear’ (Ursus americanus atlanticus), a subspecies of the North American black bear. This Atlantean subspecies was slightly smaller than their cousins, and had a fairly uniform reddish tinge to their fur (a limited genetic base). They were also somewhat more aggressive than their North American relatives, though this proved to be a less than ideal trait in dealing with humans. The Great Isle, oddly, was entirely free of snakes, even snakes akin to the ocean-going species. It was, however, home to several distinctive species of spider, some of them extremely venomous, and some of them large, some of them both. One particular genetic line produced species both tiny and large, but all possessed a venom so intense as to surpass the black widow, a single bite was often fatal in the days before psionic healing and other defenses became common. The largest of these Atlantean spiders could be as large as a grape, and so large a problem were they in the early days of the Atlantean culture that they left a permanent imprint on the language and iconography of the Atlanteans. [1] There was also a species of honeybee native to the Great Isle, cousin to the North American version, and one of the first native creatures the Atlanteans began to domesticate and breed for honey. Honey would be the primary source of concentrated sugar in the Atlantean diet for some millennia after the foundation of the Atlantean society. The Atlanteans domesticated the native goats, breeding them for meat, hide, and milk, as well as several of the local birds. They consumed squirrels for meat as well, but never truly domesticated them. Of course, the Atlanteans had access to the fish and other creatures of the sea around the Great Isle, and it was fishing that first drew the men of Atlantis back out onto the oceans, further and further outward as their skills and sea-faring technology improved. It was such a fishing vessel, setting out shortly before dawn on what would otherwise be a perfectly ordinary day in Atlantis, that would go on to found, quite without intending it, the first Atlantean colony to rise up beyond the shores of the Great Isle. MORE LATER. [1] One of the deadliest curses/personal insults in the Atlantean language would translate into modern English almost precisely as ‘spiders take him/her/them/you’. This endured long after the time that the spiders were a serious problem, indeed right up to the time of the Great Cataclysm. |
Tags |
orichalcum universe |
|
|